Work & Academics

Inspired by her involvement in the performing arts, Allegra is driven to understand human behavior and cognition from a social and biological perspective in order to help foster communication in the workplace and beyond.

Significant accomplishments:

  • Designing a comprehensive and intuitive inventory classification system for an international luxury business which now has sales of $10-25M per year

  • Organizing and funding multiple theatrical productions from the ground up

  • Consulting for a successful immersive theater crowdfund which raised over $16,000

  • Earned accelerated Psychology BA and MA at City College of New York (CCNY)

  • Accepted into two prestigious paid fellowships while at CCNY: the S Jay Levy Fellowship for Future Leaders, and the Mixner LGBTQ+ Equal Rights Fellowship

Ms. Durante has worked in the performing arts as an opera singer, actor, director, and producer, and in customer service as an administrator, sales associate, copywriter and copyeditor. This combination of experiences and skills have placed her in a unique position of being able to study and assess clients' and customers' expressed and unexpressed needs as both an experience designer and an ambassador for her employers' services.

Her goal is to use the science of psychology to broaden and apply her knowledge of human interaction, and improve communications and people-serving systems on both a large and small scale.

  • Allegra enrolled at City College of New York in fall 2021, and graduated with her BA and MA in Psychology in early 2026.

    During her freshman year (2022), she applied for and accepted into the Mixner LGBTQ+ Equal Rights Fellowship, which led to a six-month paid internship with the counseling team of the Hetrick-Martin Institute on-site in New York City. At the end of her sophomore year (2022-23), she was accepted into CCNY’s accelerated BA/MA program for Psychology, research track. She was nominated for and accepted into the S Jay Levy Fellowship for Future Leaders the same year, joining the 2023-24 cohort. As a result, she spent the summer before her senior year (summer 2024) in a second internship, this time with I’RAISE Girls and Boys International as an HR Advisory Intern, reporting directly to I’RAISE’s Director of Human Resources.

    Her Master’s Thesis, The Effect of Risk-Taking on Success in Professional Services Fields, studied how early career risk-taking may affect reaching partnership status in professional services firms, and was completed in January 2026. Upon completing her coursework, Allegra was invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa honors society. She graduated in February 2026 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Minor in Music, summa cum laude, and a Master of Arts in Psychology.

  • Professionally, she has demonstrated her organizational skills and attention to detail by organizing and funding multiple theatrical productions from the ground up, consulting for an immersive theater crowdfunding campaign in NYC which raised $16,000, and designing a comprehensive and intuitive inventory management system, from scratch, for an international luxury business which now has sales of $10-25M per calendar year.
    She has had extensive experience as both a volunteer staff member and a paid facilitator in LARP (Live Action Role-Play) events in New York City and across the country, and she is interested in exploring how that personalized form of expression (much like immersive theatre, and with many parallels to drama therapy) can be used to facilitate personal development and foster understanding and communication within groups.

    Allegra is interested in integrating her experience in psychology and in the performing arts to help effect lasting change on an industrial and systemic level. Her experience in corporate settings has impressed on her the importance of creating a positive environment for employees; she is passionate about using research to advocate for positive working conditions, particularly within large companies, and to offer employees tools to advocate for themselves and use their strengths in the workplace.

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